By Cindy Wolff

Butch Harper dreams about pit bulls, snarling muscular dogs climbing over his wooden fence coming to get him.

He kills them in his dreams.

In reality, he keeps a baseball bat near his front door.

The Marine, and former Columbus, Miss., police officer is frustrated that Hickory Hill, where he has lived for 20 years, has become overrun with stray dogs.

He's tired of having to scan the street for a loose dog before he walks out the front door.

And worse, he says, is the next-door neighbor who's had as many as six pit bulls escaping from his backyard and coming after him and his wife, Sheila.

Harper was standing in his front yard watering a plant when one of the dogs came into his yard.

He squirted it with the water hose, which stunned the dog and gave Harper enough time to get in the house.

He called police.

"Did the dog bite you?" the officer asked.

"No, because I outran it."

The officer said Harper could file a report over the phone.

After 30 minutes, he and his wife went into the front yard to turn off the hose and see if the dog was gone.

"See that monkey grass," Harper said pointing near his front door. "I got to there and saw the dog come tearing across the street at us. We jumped back inside the house."

This time they called 911.

"We're being held hostage in our own home," Sheila told the dispatcher.

A police officer drove in front of the house and the dog ran out and jumped at her window. She called Memphis Animal Services, which dispatched a truck.

The animal control officer drove past the house and turned his truck around. In that time a man came walking down the street and the dog charged at him.

"The animal control guy gunned it and tried to hit the dog," Harper said. "He missed."

The police officer and the animal control officer went toward the neighbor's house. A few seconds later, Harper heard gunshots.

"Pow. Pow. Pow. The police officer came around the side of the house and said another dog had busted out a window in the house and came at them," Harper said. "She missed."

Other patrol cars arrived for backup and animal control eventually captured the dogs.

The dog's owner, Phillip Guy, was cited for his dogs running loose. Guy paid a fine and got his dogs back but eventually got rid of them, he said.

He has a puppy now and one adult dog.

Guy said his dogs don't attack unless they are provoked and that Harper's dog is always at the fence barking at his dogs.

"Of course, my dogs are going to bark back," Guy said. "They're dogs.

"My dogs run up to people all the time and see them. They aren't mean but they're protective of me. I can walk around with a dog instead of a gun."

Shelter records show at least four incidents involving Guy's dogs. A police officer fired at one of the dogs in an incident in November. Earlier last year, a police officer delivered one of the pit bulls to the shelter in the back of a squad car.

Harper said he's only shot the dogs in his dreams, but he won't hesitate to use his bat to protect himself and his wife.

In the meantime, he's going to pack up his home, his dachshund, his cockatiel, three cats and his son's tortoise and leave the neighborhood.

"I know there are nice pit bulls out there," Harper said. "I just haven't met one. People who live in my neighborhood want their dogs to be bad and that's how they train them."